<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>this is a state of grace by hashtagartistlife</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24421666">this is a state of grace</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hashtagartistlife/pseuds/hashtagartistlife'>hashtagartistlife</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:48:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,814</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24421666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hashtagartistlife/pseuds/hashtagartistlife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>; –this is a worthwhile fight. Fate pulls them apart, and fate brings them back together. If there is one thing Ichigo and Rukia know about their separations, it is that their reunions are always worth the wait.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this is a state of grace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The poems at the start of each chapter are not mine, and are from <a href="https://gavinsky.tumblr.com/post/147568578635">this post.</a> This has 4 chapters planned, one for each stanza, but I really don't know if I'll get around to finishing it since I have other fics that are higher on my priority list. Nevertheless, I've been holding onto this one chapter for so long that I figure it's time to send it off into the wild.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>“I missed you.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>you toss it to him,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>unexpected,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>but knowing he has the animal reflexes to</span>
</p><p>
  <span>catch it. It’s half a joke,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>half something else</span>
</p><p>
  <span>and the way he looks at</span>
</p><p>
  <span>you, means you both aren’t</span>
</p><p>
  <span>ready to talk about it.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ichigo doesn’t return to his human body immediately after the battle ends. Instead, he sits outside on the rooftop, his fingers lingering along his newfound black cladding like an afterthought; he watches the stars as he traces the armour snaking around his wrists and neck. There are a lot of people who want to see him, to speak to him—but he’s shunned them all for the moment, in favour of sitting outside in his shinigami form just a little longer. As though he is afraid that should he change back, the events of tonight will dissolve into a dream and he’ll wake up powerless once again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rukia doesn’t blame him. She knows exactly how he feels, the warmth of her reiryoku returned to her after months of its absence still clear as day in her mind. She remembers what it is like to feel hopeless and helpless, trapped in a body that </span>
  <em>
    <span>was not meant for her</span>
  </em>
  <span>, going through the motions of everyday life while constantly yearning for something beyond her reach. Shinigami are not complete without their zanpakutou by their side— are not much of </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span> at all without their power ringing through their veins and soaking through their souls.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her</span>
  </em>
  <span> power had trickled back to her in small streams, gradually and softly like a dam filling with rain, but even then her first brush against Sode no Shirayuki after her incarceration in Urahara’s gigai and the Senzaikyuu had been one of the most profound and relieving moments of her life. For Ichigo, she knows it will be that much more powerful, his reiryoku having been returned to him all at once (and in a distinctly ungentle manner). So it’s no surprise to her, really, that he has chosen to stay just a little longer in his Shinigami form, has chosen to sit outside where it’s quiet, all the better to feel his reiatsu swirl around him in a cloak so thick and heavy that she’s certain no Hollows will dare bother Karakura tonight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s just three buildings away from him now, and already she can feel the pull of his reiatsu against hers, vital and alive. She hadn’t meant to seek him out when she and Renji had volunteered to scout the perimeters after Ginjou’s fall, to keep the area clear of Hollow complications while the rest of the party searched for stray Fullbringers, but somehow—like the first time, like every other time after that—she has ended up here anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some things are not like the first time, though. He’s taller, even when he’s sitting down. He’s broader. And though his back is to her, she knows his eyes will be older. A soldier’s eyes, a warrior’s eyes; not eyes you should see in the face of a seventeen-year-old.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>he’s grown up too soon.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She lands beside him like a star falling; beautiful and devastating all at once, graceful and assured. He doesn’t make any signs of acknowledgement, but his reiatsu shifts, warms and moves aside to create space for her next to him. She joins him in sitting, and his power envelops hers, settles around her like stardust. She closes her eyes and revels in the sensation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How are you?” he asks after a short silence, and she opens her eyes slowly; he is still looking at the sky, but his voice is warm and low.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That should be my line,” she replies, because it should have been; he’s only </span>
  <em>
    <span>seventeen</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he’s just killed a man. You always remember your first kill; you fold it away in the recesses of your heart and let it make or break you. Rukia will take the feeling of Kaien on the end of her sword to her grave. She knows Ichigo will see Ginjou’s last leer in his dreams till he dies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m fine,” he says lightly, “I’m fine,” repeats it for emphasis when her expression becomes skeptical. He turns to her with a hint of a smile in his eyes. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m fine.”</span>
  </em>
  <span> The unspoken ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span>’ at the end isn’t lost on either of them. She studies him a moment, and decides he is telling the truth; he really is fine. Better. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Whole.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And if that doesn’t speak volumes about how much he’s grown since the skinny, angry fifteen-year-old boy she stabbed with her sword two years prior, she doesn’t know what does. She takes back what she’d yelled at him in the heat of their reunion; he’s become </span>
  <em>
    <span>resilient</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Strong enough, and sure enough, to take on the world without her shouting directions into his ear. Which is both relieving, and a bit of a shame. She quite enjoyed the shouting at him part.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Of course, just because the boy’s grown up a bit doesn’t mean he won’t still be an idiot on occasion. Just look at Renji. Perhaps her shouting days weren’t entirely past her after all.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He must read some of her thoughts in the expression she turns to him, then, because he allows the mirth in his eyes to manifest into a smile—a half-smile, with a tinge of something bordering on sadness still, but a smile nonetheless. Rukia breathes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your hair’s shorter,” he notes out of the blue, and his hand twitches, like he wants to bring it up and tug at her shorter strands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yours is longer,” she counters, and unlike him she has no compunction about bringing her hand up and messing his windblown strands into a veritable disaster. Ichigo laughs as he tries to stop her, and she laughs too as she tries to continue, and somehow in between the reaching and the restraining and the hands around wrists, they topple over into a half-sprawled position, stargazing forgotten in favour of charting the small constellations of change scattered across the other’s person. Sideburns. Lieutenant’s badge. Black cladding. Gloves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A melancholy that wasn’t there before in his steady gaze, and a loneliness that is different to the one she has always carried in hers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Does it hurt?” she blurts out, before her thought processes can quite catch up to the ache in her heart that causes her to ask this. “Does it hurt? Where I stabbed you?” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Does it hurt,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she wants to ask, </span>
  <em>
    <span>the sadness in your eyes?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He stills beneath her, and without his larger frame supporting her precarious leaning, she has to abandon her attempts to reach his hair so she can prevent herself from collapsing on top of him. Her hands fall, and somehow both land on his chest; one off to the side, the other one directly over his sternum, where she had pierced him to transfer his powers back to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” he says quietly, “not anymore.” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Not anymore,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he wants to reply, </span>
  <em>
    <span>not now that you’re here.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>They stare at each other for a heartbeat, the moment stretching into eternity; ah, but the things that stretch far are always as fragile as the gap they bridge. A gust of wind chases a late autumn leaf into Rukia’s mouth, and the moment is broken. She splutters comically, sitting bolt upright to spit the offending plant out of her mouth, and Ichigo doubles up with laughter, rolling out from under her in helpless spasms across the cold concrete.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ah</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Rukia thinks, even as she scrunches her face up in mock outrage, </span>
  <em>
    <span>this was better.</span>
  </em>
  <span> This was something familiar in unfamiliar territory, and it gladdens her that no matter how many things change between them they will always have </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span>. This easy dynamic that neither of them can find with anyone else, and this emboldens her just enough to throw out the words that have been on the tip of her tongue all evening. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I missed you, you fool.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The moment the words are out of her mouth, she wants to take them back; the tone is all wrong, too heavy, too full of an emotion she hadn’t meant to put into them (hadn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>realized</span>
  </em>
  <span> she’d put into them). Ichigo’s eyes widen a fraction, the grin dying on his lips, and Rukia feels a detached sort of panic climbing up her throat; she was wrong, she was </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she had misjudged everything completely and there was nothing there to stop her plummeting headlong into the abyss—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only, he sits up. His lips close and part soundlessly a few times, and a hand reaches out for her almost involuntarily. She offers him her wrist, and he curls his fingers around it, clamps down on it like a lifeline. He’s looking at her with the strangest expression on his face, somewhere between anguish and yearning, and her heart jolts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I—“ the word chokes in his throat, half-strangled, barely articulated. Very suddenly, he looks much younger than his seventeen years. “Rukia, you—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her other hand reaches up to rest against his temple, brushing back the soft, spiky hair there. He tenses for a split second, all his muscles locking in a soldier’s reaction to proximity, before his bones are liquid and he melts into her touch. He exhales shakily, turning his face into her palm; she feels the warm tip of his nose brush her hand. “Rukia, I—“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shh,” she croons, “It’s alright, Ichigo. It’s ok.” And it is, because she understands—they’ve always been good at this, this </span>
  <em>
    <span>unspoken communication</span>
  </em>
  <span>. And as much as things haven’t changed between them, she understands in that moment that something significant </span>
  <em>
    <span>has.</span>
  </em>
  <span> But she barely knows what it is and he—well. If the way he is shaking is anything to go by, he’s not ready for it either. So for now, this is enough. His shaky breaths against her, his fingers around her wrists, her hand on his hair; the two of them, under the stars.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gradually, his breathing slows, evens; she makes to draw back, but his grip on her tightens. His other hand fetters her other wrist, keeping it against him. She can feel his warm exhalations on her skin and the tiny hairs on her arm stand on end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait,” he rasps, and the breath tickles on its way past, sends a shiver down her spine. His voice is calm, but there is an edge of a question to it, the tight, anticipatory tension before a reply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” she says, heart in her throat. She’s not quite sure what it is that she knows, only that she </span>
  <em>
    <span>does.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Ichigo, I know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He relaxes fractionally; he doesn’t let go of her wrists and neither does she attempt to take them away. There is something calmer in the air now, a feeling of something resolved, if only half-resolved. They will come back to it later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They breathe together. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>